ANALISIS KATA SENDI NAMA “DI” DAN “DALAM” DALAM PENULISAN KARANGAN PELAJAR TINGKATAN 4

Abstract

Good command of grammar skills can help students produce quality, critical and creative writing. The teaching of Malay grammar should follow the correct principles to avoid confusion in the use of prepositions. Most students are not proficient and lack knowledge in using prepositions correctly. This study focuses on the prepositions “di” and “dalam” in the essay writings of form 4 students. The current study applies a qualitative research method conducted on 30 essays written by form 4 students. The objective of this research is to identify, describe and analyse the forms of prepositions used in the production of form 4 students' essays. The researcher uses the Transformative Generative Theory introduced by Noam Chomsky in 1957 to explain the research objectives. The correct use of prepositions in essays is analysed using percentages. The result of the investigation shows that the percentage of correct use of the preposition “di” is 83% and the incorrect use is 17%. For the use of the preposition “dalam”, the percentage of correct answers is 65% and the incorrect answers is 35%. Conclusively, there are students who are still confused on the accurate use of prepositions according to the correct preposition formula. This situation can be seen through the dominant errors in the use of the preposition “dalam” in comparison with the preposition “di”. This investigation can further enhance the correct use of prepositions in students' essay writing and Malay language teachers need to take proactive measures to address this problem. Some of the suggestions for further studies that can be done by the researchers is to investigate grammatical mistakes using different corpora such as newspapers, magazines, speech texts, short stories, and others.